What Zoe Heard
by CaffieneKitty
Summary: She heard him before anyone else did, but her dad lit the fire anyway. (an Outsider POV missing scene from The Empty Hearse)


**Content:** outsider POV, child POV, missing scene: The Empty Hearse  
**Disclaimer:** Not my world.  
**Notes:** Written for the Dreamwidth Comm **watsons_woes **2017 July Writing Prompt #1. I started writing this July 1 2017 and then got hit with a massive all-areas writer's block, which I am still struggling with. So this JWP entry is only 1.5 years late, and will be the first fanfic of any sort I have posted since Dec 12 2016. *facepalm* ALSO, Please note, I have not seen Series 4, so please avoid including any information at all from Series 4 in comments.

_(Originally Posted on AO3 and Dreamwidth/Livejournal Feb 11, 2019)_

**Summary:** She heard him before anyone else did, but her dad lit the fire anyway.

-.-

**What Zoe Heard**

-.-

The fire was still blazing high from the petrol Daddy had used to light it. People in the crowd were shouting and pushing past them. Some were on their mobiles, some were crying, even the grown-ups.

Zoe kept trying to pull away from her dad, tugging against his protective grip. "I need to see him, Daddy!" In the center of her chest was a tight, sour, heat; like she'd swallowed an ember from the fire.

Her father's hands were firm but gentle, turning her so she couldn't see the fire or the man who'd been in it, keeping her out of the way of the jostling crowd. "It's all right, Zoe. They've got him out. He'll be fine."

Her Dad's words were definite, but his voice wasn't. It was like that time when he'd told her that about their old dog Womble when he had gotten sick, and then she'd never seen Womble again. Her dad knew a lot of things, but he didn't know if Guy Fawkes was okay or not. It sounded like he really thought he wasn't.

She squirmed. "Please Daddy, I need to see if he's all right!"

"Come away now, Zoe." He started steering them towards the cluster of the rest of the children who'd come to the park, far away from the fire. People bumped past them, calling out names, looking for people that had gone astray in the chaos. She looked back to the fire, getting further away.

"But I have- to- see!" Zoe jerked out of her father's grip and slipped into the mass of people.

"Zoe!" he bellowed, but she couldn't go back. She had to know the man was alright. She ducked between the legs of the agitated crowd, back toward the bonfire, to the huddle of people beside it.

The man in the big black coat was there and a blonde lady in a red coat, leaning over the man on the ground. Zoe hadn't seen much of what happened because her dad blocked her seeing, but she did remember the man in black shouting, pushing burning logs aside, tearing into the pile of burning wood with his hands.

The man in black was scary.

"E-excuse me, miss?" she called to the lady in the red coat.

The lady's head snapped up and she fixed Zoe with such a look that Zoe thought maybe she'd been wrong about which was the scarier of the two of them. But then the lady's look shifted. "Stay back sweetie, it's not safe. You should go back to your parents."

Zoe swallowed. "I-I'm sorry, but I need to know... is Mister Fawkes all right?"

"Mr Fox?" Rumbled the man in the coat, not looking up.

Zoe nodded. "G-guy Fawkes. You pulled him off the fire."

The lady almost smiled, looking back down at the man from the fire who Zoe still couldn't see, blocked by the scary man in black.

"Please. I need to know he's okay, I-" Zoe clenched her mittened fists against her sides. "I- I heard him."

The man in the black coat glanced at her from the corner of his eye. It was like being shot with a laser beam. Or what Zoe thought getting shot with a laser beam would be like, since she'd never been shot by one, really. It just felt like she'd had a hole burned straight through her, just from the man glancing at her.

The clenched sour ache in her chest tightened further.

Zoe ducked her head and took a breath. "I heard Guy Fawkes before, groaning. I knew he didn't like the fire. I told Daddy, I tried to get him to stop but-" the hurting in Zoe's chest cracked a little and she started to sniffle, her breath hitching, "-but he- he didn't, and- and- and- now Mr Fawkes is hurt and it's all my fault!"

With that the tight ache broke wide open and Zoe began sobbing. She'd been so excited for tonight all last week, everyone at school had been talking about Bonfire Night, and now there was a man who got hurt because she didn't try hard enough to make her dad understand. It was a horrible, horrible night. She put her face into her mittened hands and cried.

"Oh, sweetie, no. No," the lady in the red coat said, "Come here."

Zoe scrubbed at her eyes and looked up. The lady in red held out her hand, beckoning. Breath jerking in her chest and still crying, Zoe stepped closer.

"What's your name, love?"

"Zoe."

"Well, Zoe, you did the right thing. You thought something was wrong and you spoke up. Did your Daddy stop for a bit to listen to you?"

Zoe nodded, sniffing, rubbing her nose against the back of her mitten.

"There you are then! You slowed your Dad down enough that we could rescue our friend!" She pulled Zoe into a quick tight hug. "You're our hero, sweetie!"

The man in black half-turned, scowling, his mouth opening.

"Sherlock, shut it," The lady in red said through her bright grin.

The man scowled harder and shut his mouth, turning back to the man on the ground, who was blinking slowly and had scorch marks on his jacket and jumper.

"Is that him? Is that Guy Fawkes?"

"He was the one in the fire that wasn't supposed to be there. Zoe, this is John." The lady smiled and gripped the man's hand tightly, "He's going to be my husband soon."

The man on the ground wheezed in Zoe's direction.

"Hallo," Zoe said quietly, suddenly not sure what to say to a grown-up that was laying on the ground and had just been pulled out of a fire. "I'm- I'm so glad you're not dead."

The man coughed in a way that could have been a laugh if it had more air.

"Zoe! Zoe, my god! What are you doing running off- Oh!" Her dad stumbled to a stop, seeing who Zoe was standing next to. "Is this- is he alright then? Are you all right?"

"-ve had worse," John wheezed. "But not by much."

"Listen, I am so sorry, I had no idea you..."

Zoe stepped back from the lady in red, who gave her shoulder a pat as she went to stand next to her dad. Mr Fawkes- or rather Mr John was okay. The lady had said that Zoe had done the right thing, and that it had helped. She scrubbed at her still-damp nose and felt the last of the awful sour feeling in her chest fading away, listening to the adults talk and the approaching siren of an ambulance.

-.-.-  
(that's it.)

_(Post Note of randomness: among the things found out accidentally while trying to confirm what was and wasn't established about the POV character when I started writing this a year and a half ago, I found that somewhere in the real world there is an equine physiotherapist by the excellent name of Zoe Sherlock. :-))_


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